“What’s wrong?” He ran across the grass to where she was kneeling on the ground next to a small pile of rocks.
“There’s another one.” She held another chip that belonged to the set Karl used to carry around. “I guess we don’t need to worry about him drowning in the water.” Relief flooded O’Malley.
“I think I know what he was doing.” Hannah pocketed the chip. “I found it under this pile of stones. A pile someone had made. A pile I believe Karl made.”
“And you think there’s a meaning behind it.” O’Malley had some idea of what that meaning might be.
“Yes. This pilgrim’s path is all about leaving the old you behind and finding the new you. I think that Karl left these behind as a symbolic gesture. These belong to his old self. He took them everywhere with him. So now he’s shedding them.” Hannah picked up a couple of the rocks and carried them back to their campsite.
O’Malley grabbed a couple more and followed her. “I think you’re right.”
“And you were also right.” She dropped the stones on the ground and straightened up, her face glowing.
“I was?”
“You told me that I might spot something that no one else would. And I did. The people in the search party wouldn’t have known the chips belonged to Karl. O’Brian might but they probably didn’t camp here because being shifters, they would have covered more ground and not stopped.” She placed her hands on her hips, looking triumphant.
“And shifters always think they make the best trackers.” O’Malley laughed as he dumped the rest of the rocks on the ground. “But you did it, you found the clues.”
Her smile faded. “But we haven’t found Karl. All we really know is that he was here.”
“And that he didn’t drown in the pool. That is a big relief.” O’Malley stepped closer to her and slid his arm around her shoulder. “We know what we’re looking for now. We know the clues Karl was leaving as he made this journey.”
“He’s leaving us a breadcrumb trail, he just never realized it.” Hannah glanced up at O’Malley. “Where can he be?”
“Let’s just focus on one step at a time. We follow the trail and look for these piles of stones.” He let her go and hunkered down next to the stones. “Let’s get this fire built.”
Hannah was shivering, either from the cold or from her emotional state. He needed to get her warm and make sure she ate. Getting sick up here in the mountains was dangerous.
The mountain might have already claimed one Norton child. It’s not going to claim another. It’s certainly not going to claim our mate, his cougar said firmly.
Not on our watch, O’Malley agreed.
Hannah helped him arrange the rocks in a circle. When her hands brushed against his, her skin was chilled. A quick glance at her face worried him further. She looked pale and tired. This journey had been too much for her. He should have insisted she stayed back at the village with Elvie.
But then she would not have found the chips, his cougar reminded him.
He was right. But having a mate, seeing her suffering was hard to take. O’Malley wanted to scoop her up and carry her back to O’Brian’s house and wrap her up warm and cozy in the bed they’d shared.
“I’ll get the fire lit.” He quickly grabbed some dry kindling and struck his flint and steel, creating a shower of sparks. The kindling caught fire and he added some small sticks before feeding the fire some dry branches he’d collected from under a rocky overhang. There wasn’t a lot of wood and it wouldn’t last too long.
“What are we having for dinner?” Hannah asked as she sorted through their rations.
“I thought the beef bourguignon. It’s great considering it comes out of a packet. Why don’t you eat an energy bar while I boil some water and make coffee?”
“I can help,” Hannah insisted and then tilted her head to one side. “What?”
He reeled back. “What?”
“You’re looking at me kind of funny.” Her eyes widened and she looked around. “Do you know something I don’t? Is there someone out there?” Her mouth turned down at the corners. “Or have you seen another clue?”
He shook his head quickly. “Nothing like that. I’m concerned about you.”
She raked a hand through her hair. “I’m fine. Nothing some good food and a long sleep won’t fix.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very.” She slid closer to him across the ground and put her arms around his neck. “It’s been an emotionally draining day. I really thought Karl had drowned in the pool. Then to find out he at least got this far…it’s been a rollercoaster. One I know isn’t over yet.”
O’Malley slid his arms around her waist and cradled her to him. “I just don’t want to lose you, too.”
She pulled back from him. “That isn’t going to happen. I’m fine, honestly.” And as if to prove it she tilted her head back and kissed him.
Chapter Fourteen – Hannah
Maybe she was delirious but kissing O’Malley just felt right. As their lips moved against each other, it was as if they were celebrating life and love. Whatever happened with Karl, she would never let it taint her feelings for the cougar shifter who had walked away from his life to help her.
As their tongues entwined, heat crept across her skin and a fire ignited within her, one that had been waiting to be lit. O’Malley’s left hand went to the small of her back and he pulled her closer, the warmth of his body passing from him to her. He chased away the cold and her fears in that one kiss.
“I have to check the fire,” he murmured as he pulled away from her. “We don’t have much fuel.”
He glanced up at her and smiled shyly before he half turned to nurse the fire.
“Should I go and look for more wood?”
“I scoured the area while you were collecting the rocks and I couldn’t find any more. This should be fine for us to cook on. Then we can get into bed and share our body heat.” He grinned, his eyes dancing as he went back to his normal self.
“I’ll share your body heat. Unfortunately, I don’t have any spare.” She held out her hands to the fire and then rubbed them together. The temperature was dropping as the sun’s heat dissipated. The clear sky above would be great for stargazing, but it would mean a very cold night.
They worked together, developing a rhythm as they prepared their meal and boiled water for coffee. When it was ready, they ate in silence, savoring the quiet of the mountain, permeated by the occasional cry of a lonely bird and the crackle and spit of the fire.
It was as if they were on top of the world.
Or the last two people in the world. This must be how the first people felt. Alone in a big world.
Only she wasn’t alone. She had O’Malley, the cougar shifter.
“Will you shift for me?” Hannah asked as they finished packing everything away. The fire was nearly gone, and the cold was seeping through her many layers of clothes. The tent, or more particularly her sleeping bag, beckoned but she longed to see the other side of the man who called her mate.
In amongst worrying for Karl, the thought of exactly what that meant would creep in. Her brother’s disappearance wasn’t the only thing she needed answers to.
“Now?” O’Malley asked in surprise as he pulled his pack closed.
“Yes.” Hannah crept toward the tent. “If you don’t mind.”
“No.” His expression brightened. “Okay.”
He moved away from the fire, standing about fifteen feet away from the tent. “I feel like a kid in a school performance.”
She grinned. “It’s only me. Your mate. Aren’t we supposed to be a perfect fit?”
“We are,” he agreed.
“Then I am going to love your cougar, and this will be your perfect performance.” She batted her eyelashes. “I can applaud if that makes you feel better.”
“Clapping would just be weird,” O’Malley told her.
“Then I won’t clap.” She chuckled and pulled her knees up to her chin before w
rapping her arms around her legs as if she were trying to make herself as small as possible.
“Ready?”
“Absolutely.” She held her breath as the air around O’Malley seemed to fizzle and pop. Then he was gone. For an instant, she was totally alone. For an instant, she felt like Karl must have when he took the pilgrim’s path on his own with no other person around for miles.
Then the cougar appeared. At first, she could only see a silhouette, and then it was as if someone painted on his features as his eyes and nose came into focus. Lifting his head, the tawny creature snarled and twitched his tail before stalking toward her.
A slow rumble greeted her as the large feline drew closer. She reached out her hand and the beast sniffed her hand before leaning forward and brushing his large head against her hand. She tickled him as you would tickle a cat under the chin. The rumble in his chest deepened.
“You are incredible.” She’d never been this close to such a magnificent animal. The cougar before her was sleek and strong, and O’Malley’s words came back to her. He would protect her against anything and now she that had seen the cougar, the other side of O’Malley, she knew it was true.
Seeing the cougar had also given her a new belief. If the cougar was real, then mates must be real. As she stroked his fur and planted a light kiss on his head, she was ready to give herself over to this notion once and for all. She was ready to believe.
When she lifted her head, she realized tears were streaming down her face and she’d left a wet patch on the top of the cougar’s head. “Sorry,” she murmured and then tried to dry it with her sleeve. The cougar just looked up at her with his deep sorrowful eyes that reminded her so much of O’Malley.
They were one and the same, she could see it in those eyes.
The cougar brushed his head against her cheek and then leaned on her shoulder as if he were hugging her. Hannah curled her fingers into his fur and let her tears fall. Tears for Karl’s unknown whereabouts, but mostly tears for the mom she’d lost. A mom who would never watch her daughter walk down the aisle.
As she hugged the cougar and cried, she knew that she would walk down the aisle and O’Malley would be the man waiting for her, ready to give her a happy ever after.
When her tears had subsided, she kissed the cougar again and then let him go. Emotionally drained, she kicked off her boots and slid back into the tent where she watched the cougar disappear and the man, O’Malley, returned to her.
“Are you okay?” he asked gently as he came to her, dropped to his knees, and held out his arms.
She nodded mutely and crept forward. Why had it been so much easier to cry in front of the cougar, to bare her emotions to someone who couldn’t talk? Perhaps because of habit. She’d spent so many years hiding her true emotions from the people around her. Even from herself, it was the touch, the warmth, the nearness of an animal who didn’t judge that had finally pulled down those walls she’d put up to defend herself.
“Why don’t we get into bed?” O’Malley guided her back into the tent and helped her take off her jacket.
The glowing embers were all that was left of the fire. O’Malley grabbed the lantern from his pack and lit it as she fumbled in the near-dark. The welcome light made it easier for her to slip into her sweatpants and then climb into her sleeping bag.
While she undressed, he turned around and kicked off his boots, then dragged his warm coat off his shoulders before placing them neatly inside the tent. He paused, looking down at the sleeping bags. “I can zip them together if you want.”
“I’d like that.” She shuffled to the side of the sleeping bag while he unzipped both of them and then zipped them together to make one large sleeping bag. O’Malley slipped off his combat pants before he pulled off his sweater and then got inside the sleeping bag. When he switched off the lantern, they were cast in darkness, but his breathing reassured her. He was there and he would never leave her.
He lay still for a long moment before he inched closer to her, as if checking if it was okay to invade her space. He’d held her before but being in the sleeping bags was more intimate.
Hannah shuffled toward him, her elbow snagging on a hard lump of rock as she moved.
“Hold me.” She slid her arms around his neck and nestled against him. For a moment, O’Malley froze and then he finally relaxed, and the warmth of his body seeped through her clothes and warmed her.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much.” As she lay in his arms with a full belly of food, her strength returned. She was able to put things into perspective and brush off her overwrought emotions. “Can we look at the stars?”
“Sure.” He unzipped the door section of the tent. The air outside was surprisingly cooler and she pressed closer to O’Malley. The stars in the sky were brilliant. So bright it was as if she could reach up and touch them.
“I wonder if Karl can see the same stars.”
O’Malley didn’t answer. What could he say? He had no more knowledge of whether her brother was alive or dead than she had.
Then he spoke. “When we were stationed abroad, we would often look up at the night sky as a way of feeling closer to our loved ones.”
“But if Karl is looking up at those same stars, why hasn’t he contacted us for weeks?” she asked, a question O’Malley had no answer to.
“I don’t know.” He closed his arms tighter around her.
“My only explanation is that he hit his head and has amnesia.” She tilted her head farther back. “Or that he broke his leg and can’t walk and the people who have saved him don’t have access to a phone.”
“There are many possible explanations,” O’Malley said but he was only trying to placate her.
“But no good explanations.” She turned and looked at him. As her eyes got used to the dark, she could see his profile, his nose, and his full kissable lips.
“No good explanations.” He sighed. “But I believe in hope. I believe in hanging on to hope until the absolute last moment.”
“And how does that work out for you?” She drew her hand out from under the sleeping bag and traced her finger across his cheek.
O’Malley turned his head to look at her. “You are here, aren’t you?”
“Good answer.” She shifted her weight and leaned on her elbow as she kissed his lips.
O’Malley cupped her cheek in his large, warm hand and kissed her right back. He hardened, pressing against her thigh and leaving her in no doubt of his arousal. If she pushed this further, he would make love to her right here, right now, under the stars.
Was that what she wanted? She didn’t want to make love to him just to fill the hole in her heart. This couldn’t be about smothering her fears for Karl by taking advantage of O’Malley.
Although, she doubted he would see it as being taken advantage of at all.
It was just a kiss. She was overthinking it as usual.
Yet as their kiss deepened, tendrils of desire unfurled in her belly and spread out to every part of her body. She was fooling herself if she thought this was just a kiss. This was so much more. This was two people finding each other and perhaps finding their true selves under the stars on a lonely mountain.
This was Hannah’s first real step toward committing herself to O’Malley and that word mate. As his tongue entwined with hers, she got a brief glimpse of what that truly meant. They belonged together.
She’d had plenty of relationships in the past. Some more serious than others. None that she believed would ever end in marriage and children. But she already knew that if he asked her to marry him now, she would say yes.
Hannah pulled back, scared of that kind of commitment.
Yet when she looked down at his face, she knew this was not something she could outrun. It was not something she could bury deep inside of her.
Some things were too strong for that and her relationship with O’Malley was one of those things.
“We can just lie here and look at the stars.” His voice, soft an
d gentle in the dark, soothed her and she relaxed, giving herself to the moment. Giving herself to him.
Hannah slid her hand down his chest, feeling the contours of his body through the thin fabric of his T-shirt. This was the next step. If she took it, she wouldn’t allow herself to chicken out and say no. It wouldn’t be fair, although she knew that the moment she said stop, the moment she had doubts, O’Malley would honor her wishes.
He could never hurt her. She believed him. It wasn’t just words, it was there in each look, each touch, each moment of concern she witnessed in his expression.
“We could just look at the stars.” She leaned forward and pressed her lips to the side of his mouth, “Or we could make love under them.”
He went very still before he let out a pent-up breath that appeared as a puff of vapor around his face. “We don’t have to. We can wait.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to?” Hannah was suddenly concerned she’d misread the situation, that she was pushing things along too fast.
“Oh, I’ve wanted to since the first moment we met.” He let out a short laugh. “Maybe I should have kept that thought to myself.”
“I don’t think I have ever had that kind of an effect on a man before.” She took a deep breath, the cold air prickling her throat and lungs.
“That’s because no man has ever felt this way about you before.” He turned onto his side and stroked her cheek with his fingertips before he lowered his head and kissed her.
His lips were warm on hers and it was as if he breathed fire into her, warming every inch of her body, inside and out. Hannah slid her arms around his neck and pressed closer to him, not because of his warmth but because she wanted to be as close as humanly possible to the man.
O’Malley slid his hand under her clothes, managing to find her bare skin under her several layers of clothes. Layers that were a barrier between them.
Reaching for the hem of her sweater, she peeled it off and pushed it down into her sleeping bag so when she put it back on it would be warm. She was worried anything left outside of the sleeping bags, which were like an oasis of warmth on the cold mountain, would be covered in ice by morning.
O'Malley: Summer (Shifter Seasons Book 7) Page 10
